The Medicare prescription-drug benefit introduced in 2006 saved an estimated 19,000 to 27,000 lives in its first year by expanding access to medications that treat cardiovascular killers like strokes and heart disease, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.Read More »

The U.S. national debt recently topped $18 trillion, and deficits may start to climb again by 2018. What does it mean for the U.S. economy?

President Barack Obama is set to release his new budget Monday. Economics reporters Nick Timiraos and Josh Zumbrun answered your questions about the deficit and debt outlook in a Q&A on Facebook. Read More »

More Americans than ever before are tapping government benefits. But this time the baby boomers may be responsible for the slight uptick.

Nearly half of Americans, 49.5%, lived in a household where at least one person was receiving some type of government benefit in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to Census Department data. That number ticked up slightly from 49.2% at the end of 2011.

The share of Americans receiving government benefits has risen steadily during the recession and sluggish recovery. The types of benefits run the gamut, from Social Security to unemployment compensation to food stamps. Read More »

49.2%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The share of Americans living with someone receiving government benefits continued to rise well into the economic recovery, reflecting a weak labor market that pushed more families onto food stamps, Medicaid or other programs.

Nearly half of the U.S., or 49.2% of the population, living a household that received government benefits in the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 45.3% three years earlier, the Census Bureau said. By the end of 2011, the economy was two and a half years out of the recession, but the unemployment rate remained above 8%. Read More »

–Five Years After Crash: Both Pew Research Center and Galluphave polls looking back on the crisis. “Five years after the U.S. economy faced its most serious crisis since the Great Depression, a majority of Americans (63%) say the nation’s economic system is no more secure today than it was before the 2008 market crash. Just a third (33%) think the system is more secure now than it was then. Large percentages say household incomes and jobs still have yet to recover from the economic recession. And when asked about the impact of government efforts to deal with the recession, far more believe that economic policies have benefitted large banks, corporations and the rich than the middle-class, the poor or small businesses.”

–Government Data:Justin Wolfers derides the Labor Department’s data collection. “In practice, the Labor Department often releases badly flawed data. This morning, for instance, it reported that initial unemployment claims were 292,000, a decrease of 31,000, and a number fully 35,000 below expectations. It’s the sort of number that might lead you to become more optimistic about the recovery. But you shouldn’t.”

–Medicare:Timothy Taylor looks at the difference in Medicare costs across states. “Medicare is same insurance program across the country. Everyone across the country pays the same taxes to support Medicare and the elderly across the country pay the same premiums. But Medicare spending per enrollee varies considerably across states. Here’s a table from the Kaiser Family Foundation showing spending per Medicare enrollee by state of residence, using data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Some states like Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, and Texas have average spending per Medicare enrollee more than 10% above the national average; a number of others, like Hawaii, Montana, and Idaho have spending more than 10% below the national average.” Separately, the Harvard School of Public Healthnotes the big gap between experts and the public on need to cut Medicare spending. Read More »

–Stimulus:Robert Shiller looks at ways to do debt-friendly stimulus. “Keynesian stimulus does not necessarily entail more government debt, as popular discourse seems continually to assume. Rather, stimulus is about collective decisions to get aggregate spending back on track. Because it is a collective decision, the spending naturally involves different kinds of consumption than we would make individually – say, better highways, rather than more dinners out. But that should be okay, especially if we all have jobs. Balanced-budget stimulus was first advocated in the early 1940’s by William Salant, an economist in President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, and by Paul Samuelson, then a young economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They argued that, because any government stimulus implies higher taxes sooner or later, the increase might as well come immediately. For the average person, the higher taxes do not mean lower after-tax income, because the stimulus will have the immediate effect of raising incomes. And no one is deceived.”

–Medicare Costs:Peter Orszag notes that keeping Medicare costs down could significantly improve the debt. “Official projections, which do not fully incorporate the recent slowdown, suggest that spending on Medicare will rise from 3.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 to 6.7 percent in 2085. In contrast, the Economic Report of the President shows in an illustrative calculation that it will rise only to 3.8 percent of GDP by 2085 — not much higher than it is today — if the per-beneficiary growth rate we have seen in the past five years keeps going. If this happens, in other words, a major part of our long- term budget problem would disappear. And the nation’s long-term fiscal gap would narrow by almost a third, according to a recent study by the economists William Gale of the Brookings Institution and Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley. So is it possible to keep the trend going? On this, we have somewhat conflicting news. A recent report from the Altarum Institute found that slow growth is continuing at the national level, with total health-care spending rising slightly more than 4 percent in nominal terms from January 2012 to January 2013. On the other hand, incoming Medicare data suggest spending is speeding up a bit.”

–Government Job Proposals:Jeffrey Jones goes through Gallup polling data on government job creation proposals. “Job creation proposals enjoy widespread public support, including majority backing among all party groups, even when the issue of government spending is raised in an era when deficit reduction is one of the major priorities for the federal government. Despite the high levels of support for the job creation proposals, the political realities in Washington are such that Congress has not passed any of the proposals since President Obama first advocated many of these more than a year ago. The major sticking point with jobs legislation — as with most other measures being considered in Washington — may not be whether the programs should be pursued but whether the government should pay for them through increased taxes or cuts in other government programs.” Read More »

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